From PC World: Ellen Pao, interim CEO of online community site Reddit, offered the site’s users an apology Monday, saying that “we screwed up.”
She went on to acknowledge a litany of sins, focusing on poor communication from site administrators about major changes, broken promises and a lack of responsiveness to concerns from users. Moving forward, Pao said Reddit will make key improvements, including giving a site administrator the position of advocating for the fleet of volunteer moderators who make Reddit tick and building new tools to help those moderators do their jobs.
The apology comes after a weekend of rage aimed at Reddit’s administrators in general and Pao in particular. On Friday, a group of moderators shut down some of the site’s most popular communities in protest after the sudden dismissal a day earlier of Victoria Taylor, who some volunteer moderators say was instrumental in setting up “ask me anything” question and answer sessions with high-profile celebrities.
Her sudden departure left some moderators in the lurch, and they chose to make their communities private, while others followed suit to express their dissatisfaction with Reddit’s administration.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said in a comment on Pao’s post that the company wants moderators of individual communities to organize celebrity AMAs, rather than having Reddit coordinate them directly. The company’s “talent relations team” will encourage celebrities and other notable people to become regular users of the site.
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